Tencent Games, Nvidia partner for START cloud gaming service

Chinese multinational conglomerate holding company Tencent Games has announced a partnership with American technology company Nvidia. The latter will utilize its GPU technology to help power Tencent’s START cloud gaming service. Similar to other platforms like Google Stadia and Microsoft xCloud, it will allow gamers to play AAA games on devices that could not normally handle them.

NVIDIA partners with Tencent

“As one of the leading global platforms for game development, publishing and operations, Tencent Games is set to deliver amazing cloud gaming,” said Jeff Fisher, senior vice president of Gaming at Nvidia, in a release. “Combining the Tencent platform with NVIDIA’s GPU technology will provide a world-class experience for gamers everywhere.”

With Tencent Games’ expansive reach, it hopes to scale the platform to millions of gamers in China. Rather than paying an hourly fee at a PC cafe, users can now play the same games on their own computers — even if lacking in processing power.

This news comes shortly after Nvidia revealed collaborations with SoftBank and LG Corporation Uplus for cloud gaming solutions. Nvidia also currently operates its own PC cloud gaming platform, GeForce NOW, which is available in North America and Europe.

START cloud gaming service

“NVIDIA’s leadership in building the world’s most powerful GPUs paired with their experience in cloud solutions will empower us to scale our START platform to millions of gamers,” said Steven Ma, senior vice president at Tencent. “Today marks a new opportunity for our companies to further push the frontiers of gaming.”

The collaboration will include a joint innovation lab for gaming. The two companies will work together on new applications that focus on AI in games, game engine optimizations, and lighting techniques like ray tracing and light baking. The START cloud gaming service started testing earlier this year and will be slightly different than competing platforms. Gamers will be able to save their settings and files directly on the platform, rather than requiring storage to be available on their computer.